[Empire Army 03] - Call to Arms Read online

  “Do you have a problem, Krug?” Bohlen glowered at him.

  “No, sergeant.”

  In the aftermath of the skirmish, it had become plain Krug and Febel had survived intact. As yet neither of them had said anything to Dieter about the events at the peasant hut earlier in the day, but a few menacing stares from Krug had been enough to warn him the affair had not been forgotten. For his part, Dieter had not decided whether he should report the two men’s behaviour to Sergeant Bohlen. He was inclined to ask Gerhardt or Rieger for their opinion, but for the present he thought he should let the matter rest. There were far more pressing issues ahead of them.

  “The rest of the regiment will withdraw in stages, file by file,” Bohlen said. “The captain has already sent runners ahead to take news of the orcs to our army. But, if they don’t make it, it is the duty of every man in the regiment to make sure the news gets through. If not, there’s the danger the greenskin bastards will catch the encampment unawares. We all have friends and comrades back at camp. I take it I don’t need to tell you what’ll happen to them if the orcs overrun it?”

  No one among the men of the file tried to answer his question. The glum expressions on their faces were answer enough.

  “It’s our job to cover for the others so they can escape,” Bohlen continued. He pointed to a trail that cut through the trees and led over the lip of the valley. “There aren’t enough of us to form a line and guard the whole area, so we’ll position ourselves in the place where the greenskins’ scouts are most likely to emerge. This trail here seems the easiest way up from the river. We’ll set up on either side of it and hope for best.”

  * * *

  “Well, that’s it,” Hoist said, ten minutes later. “It’s in Sigmar’s hands now. We’ll just have to trust to his mercy.”

  “Sigmar’s mercy?” Rieger lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “I suspect you would’ve had to have lived a more virtuous life, my friend, to have any hope of that.”

  In accordance with Sergeant Bohlen’s instructions, the ten men of the file had split into two groups of five and hidden themselves on either side of the trail that led up from the river. Preferring to avoid any further entanglement with either Krug or Febel, Dieter was relieved when Bohlen ordered him to join the men on the opposite side of the trail to theirs.

  He had been assigned to the left side of the trail, to a five-man group commanded by Gerhardt, alongside Hoist, Rieger and Kuranski. Given that an entire enemy army was probably headed towards them, it seemed a pitifully small force with which to meet their advance.

  Still, the Scarlets had done their best to make sure any impending battle was not wholly one-sided. Expecting the leading elements of the enemy army to be scouts or fast cavalry, they had laid a length of rope across the trail, camouflaging its existence with fallen leaves. Other than that, they could only wait.

  “At least I’m better off than Kuranski,” Hoist said. “Admittedly, I’m no theologian. But I can’t see Sigmar performing any miracles on behalf of a Kislevite.”

  Hoist turned to Kuranski with a mischievous smile.

  “What gods do they worship in Kislev anyhow, Kuranski? Whoever they are, I’d say you’d better start praying at once. Of course, you’re so far away from your homeland, they might not be able to hear you.”

  “You can kiss my backside, Hoist,” Kuranski hissed back. “I keep telling you, I’m only half-Kislevite. My father was from Kislev, but my mother was born in Hergig—just like I was. That means I’m as much a Hochlander as you are. Assuming you ever knew your parents well enough to be able to tell where they came from.”

  “Personally, I’d always assumed Hoist was raised by wolves,” Rieger offered. “It would account for his atrocious table manners.”

  “Hnn, we can’t all be born with a silver spoon in our mouths,” Hoist grunted. “You are so fastidious about everything, Rieger, it surprises me you didn’t try to become a tax collector when they wouldn’t let you be a priest. You have the personality for it.”

  “Quiet,” Gerhardt said, his quiet voice commanding instant authority. “I think I heard something. Listen.”

  Straining his ears as the others fell silent, Dieter wondered initially whether Gerhardt was hearing things. Then, distantly, he heard a series of unfamiliar sounds coming from further down the trail. It was a soft sound, more like the padding of giant paws than the harsh echo of hooves.

  Whatever was making the noise was coming nearer. Without realising it, Dieter’s hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.

  “Wait for the signal,” Gerhardt whispered, noticing his behaviour. “And keep it quiet, all of you. Their ears will be sharp.”

  Even as Dieter tried to guess what manner of creatures were approaching, their identity was abruptly revealed as a pack of a dozen or so giant wolves appeared at the end of the trail. As a small boy, growing up at the mill, he had occasionally seen the paw prints left by such creatures on the edge of the forest. However, it was the first time he had seen wolves of such great size in the flesh.

  Even more remarkably, the wolves had riders. He supposed, given the animals were the size of horses, it made sense that goblins had long ago decided to use them as mounts. Certainly, both species shared a common savagery and cunning.

  If anything, the goblins he could see riding down the trail on wolfback were more savage and barbaric than the ones he had already encountered. Perhaps it was a measure of the confidence that came to them from riding their wolfish mounts, but in their behaviour they seemed more reminiscent of orcs than goblins.

  Each wolf rider was festooned with grisly trophies, presumably taken from vanquished opponents. Dieter saw leather cords that held severed heads, dried animal claws and other unpleasant objects, dangling from the riders and their mounts. The riders themselves were well-armed, each carrying a spear, shield, bow and a quiver of arrows.

  Watching them, Dieter realised Captain Harkner had been right to be wary of the threat of enemy scouts. There was no doubt the wolf riders had been sent ahead of the main greenskin army to scout the terrain. If Dieter and the other men of Sergeant Bohlen’s file attacked them, there was every chance some of the wolf riders would escape to bring back reinforcements. There was no other option, however.

  They could not let the wolf riders get past them for fear the goblins would discover the rest of the regiment.

  Dieter understood the logic of the situation. It was better for a ten-man rearguard to be exposed to danger rather than to run the risk of the greenskins riding down their fleeing regiment. If he and the men around him were destined to be the sacrificial lambs in order to keep their retreating comrades safe, so be it. It was the soldier’s way.

  The wolf riders were coming closer. Dieter would have expected them to advance more cautiously through unknown terrain, but their mounts moved down the trail at a loping gallop. Suddenly mindful of the keenness of a wolfs sense of smell, Dieter glanced at the leaves around him to see which way the wind was blowing. If the wolves sensed their odour, it would ruin everything.

  Seemingly unaware of the human presence, the wolf riders kept coming. The lead riders were almost abreast of Dieter and the others’ hiding place. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, so loud it seemed a wonder no one else could hear it. The air felt charged with invisible tension.

  A shrill whistle sounded from the other side of the trail. It was the signal to attack.

  “Now!” Gerhardt yelled, as the Scarlets emerged from hiding.

  On either side of the trail, two men pulled hard on the rope, lifting it to head height as the goblins rode past. Riding into the rope, the three leading goblins were thrown back from their mounts and sent tumbling to the ground. Meanwhile, the other men of the file had charged from cover, catching the wolf riders by surprise.

  Dieter was among them. Attacking the nearest goblin to him, he parried its spear thrust and jerked the creature from its saddle, pulling it down forcefully enough to dash the goblin’s head against the hard
ground. Almost immediately, he realised his mistake as the goblin’s mount turned and snarled. Too late, it occurred to Dieter that fighting wolf riders was not like fighting men on horseback—not when the mount was potentially more dangerous than its rider.

  Jumping out of the way as the wolf whirled and snapped its jaws at him, Dieter cautiously backed away from the animal. Hoping to draw it into making a lunge, he shook his shield at it and stepped forward as though he was going to charge it.

  The wolf took the bait. Leaping forward, it tried to pounce on him and knock him from his feet, but Dieter was faster. Correctly gauging the animal’s angle of attack, he sidestepped it and stabbed his sword deep into its side, just behind the wolf’s front leg.

  Howling, the wolf turned back on itself and tried to bite Dieter, but the lethal blow had already been struck. Overcome by sudden weakness, it collapsed to the ground and died.

  Startled, Dieter heard another howl as a figure charged towards him from the side. Expecting another wolf, he was surprised to see it was a goblin—the rider of the wolf he had killed. Its head bleeding from the wound inflicted when Dieter had pulled it from its saddle, the goblin let out a weird, undulating cry as it closed to melee distance and attacked. Dieter knew nothing of these creatures and their ways, but it seemed to him the goblin was reacting with some deep emotion as though the death of its mount had moved it to rage.

  Whatever the case, it hardly mattered. Without its wolf, the goblin was a less fearful proposition. Almost as an afterthought, Dieter dispatched it with a quick stroke of his sword.

  Looking about him, he saw the skirmish was over. The other men of the file had killed the rest of the wolf riders and their mounts without sustaining any serious injuries. More importantly, none of the goblins had escaped to raise the alarm.

  “All right,” Sergeant Bohlen said, once he was sure all the enemy were dead. “We drag the bodies back into the undergrowth and set up as before. If we’re lucky, we’ll take the next group of scouts along this road in exactly the same way.”

  The men moved to follow his orders, but before they could finish their labours a commotion from further down the trail grabbed their attention.

  Another half-dozen wolf riders suddenly appeared at the end of the trail. Spotting the Scarlets as they were busily dragging away the corpses of the goblins they had already killed, the wolf riders let loose a hasty volley of arrows, turned tail and galloped away in the direction they had come. The arrows fell short, leaving the Scarlets unharmed, but the damage was already done.

  “Rhya’s teats!” Bohlen cursed as the scouts rode away. “That’s torn it! Inside a quarter of an hour every greenskin in the area will be on us like dung on a bull’s arse.”

  The sergeant scanned the trail in both directions, casting watchful eyes at the looming shapes of the trees in the forest around them.

  “We’ve got no choice,” he said, after he had considered the matter for a few seconds. “Now the greenskins know where we are, they can come at us from every angle and tear us apart. Our position on this trail is no longer defensible.”

  “There’s a woodsman’s hut further along here,” Hoist said, pointing vaguely eastwards. “One of the local huntsmen mentioned it to me last night. I didn’t see it when we came this way earlier because of the mists, but from what the huntsman told me, I’d say it’s over in that direction.”

  “There’d be a wood pile there,” Gerhardt said. “Maybe some bigger logs. Assuming we can reach it before the greenskins, it wouldn’t take us long to create a barricade we could fight behind. That way, we could make more of a stand. Give the rest of the regiment more time to escape.”

  “We could even set fire to the hut itself,” Rieger picked up the theme. “It would make it more likely the orc army would be drawn toward us rather than tracking the regiment. Orcs love nothing more than some smoke and fire. It would attract them to us like moths to a flame.”

  Long seconds passed in silence as the sergeant thought it through. Standing nearby, Dieter wondered whether they were talking about the same hut where he and Krug had nearly come to blows. He worried whether he should say something to someone about the old woman’s body, but a murderous glare from Krug made him hold silent. It was not so much that the other man frightened him; more that it seemed an inappropriate time to bring the matter up, given they were likely to be fighting side by side against the orcs at any moment.

  “We’ll head for this hut,” Sergeant Bohlen said, finally. “It sounds like a better place to make a stand. Hoist, you lead the way. Breitmeyer, you’re our rearguard. Right then, there’s no time like the present. Quick time, two men in tandem. Let’s get going.”

  Following the sergeant’s lead, the men formed up two-abreast, with Hoist at the front of the short column and Breitmeyer at the rear. At a signal from Bohlen, they began to jog down the trail in search of the hut.

  Uncomfortably close to Krug and Febel in the marching order, Dieter wondered what would happen at the hut when they found it.

  In the end, they didn’t make it.

  Having first encountered the hut when the forest was still shrouded in early morning mist, Dieter had no clear idea of where it was. He would have had a better chance of finding an obscure tavern on the docks of Talabheim, a city he had never visited, than of finding his way back to the hut.

  Similarly, having only the half-remembered directions he had heard from a huntsman to go on, Hoist showed no great aptitude in leading his comrades to their destination. Nor did Krug or Febel volunteer any information—if they had any. However, the greatest obstacle the men of Sergeant Bohlen’s file faced in reaching the hut was not a lack of directions. It was that the orcs did not leave them alone long enough to be able to find it.

  The first attack came after only a few minutes. Bohlen’s men were jogging along the trail when they heard the sound of wild whoops and war cries. A new group of wolf riders had appeared on the trail behind them. Foregoing any attempt at subtlety, they seemed intent on riding the Scarlets down.

  “Form up on me,” Bohlen said, his eyes narrowing as he saw the enemy. “I want two ranks of five, spread across the trail with the first rank in skirmish formation. First rank, you’re to let the riders pass you. Second rank, stay tight enough to lock shields with each other. You’re the wall that breaks their charge. When they see you, they’ll have to pull up. That’s when we’ll skewer them.”

  Following the example of the other men around him, Dieter took up a position in the second rank.

  They readied to meet the wolf riders’ charge in exactly the way that Sergeant Bohlen had directed. The first rank of five men stood strung across the trail, posted far enough apart to let the goblins ride through the gaps and pass by the side of them.

  The second rank adopted a tighter formation. The men stood close together, each man’s shield edge-to-edge with the shields of the men on either side of him. With their swords held thrusting outward in a high guard position, the five men had created a shield wall—making an impenetrable barrier across the centre of the trail, studded with sharp points.

  The shield wall was an unusual tactic for a group of swordsmen. Mostly utilised by units of spearmen who could make better use of the longer reach of their weapons, it was one of the most ancient and venerable manoeuvres in the tactical lexicon of the armies of the Empire. Legend had it the shield wall was one of the many innovations the god Sigmar had brought to human warfare when he still walked the land as a man.

  In his youth, Dieter had practised the shield wall often. Helmut Schau had insisted on it. As the only experienced soldier in the village, Helmut had been commander of the local militia as well as a miller. He had drilled the other members of the militia in the tactic relentlessly, telling them the strength of their shield wall might one day stand between them and certain death.

  For Dieter, today was that day. Using the formation now, to fight mankind’s natural enemies the greenskins, he felt part of an unbroken line of human achievement
and succession stretching back over two and a half thousand years to the founding of the Empire and beyond.

  “The strength of the shield wall is the collective strength of every man in it,” Helmut had taught him. “Each man must do his duty. He must hold the line in face of the enemy charge, in face of his own fear. He must hold the line, or else the wall breaks and he dooms his comrades.”

  Mindful of the lesson, Dieter ignored the nervous butterflies fluttering in his stomach and set himself to receive the goblins’ charge. As the wolf riders came closer, it occurred to him it took a special courage, or a special madness, for a soldier to hold his ground when cavalry were charging towards him.

  Setting aside their bows, the goblins held their spears couched under their arms like lances as they charged. As they closed the distance to the infantry, the sound of wolf paws padding on the hard ground of the trail grew louder until it resembled a strange kind of thunder accompanied by the noise of claws scratching in the dirt. It took every ounce of bravery in Dieter’s soul to hold the line in the face of the charging enemy. It was the wolves, not the goblins, that he found most frightening. With slavering jaws and hungry eyes, they seemed the nightmare creatures of his nursery dreams given wicked flesh.

  “First rank! Let them pass!”

  Sergeant Bohlen shouted out the order a split second before his men came within range of the goblin spears. Acting with well-drilled precision, the men of the first rank abruptly stood aside to let the goblins pass, melting away before the wolves or their riders could touch them.

  Carried on by the momentum of their charge, the wolf riders found themselves bearing down on the second rank’s shield wall with its line of gleaming sword-points. Not unnaturally, they tried to halt their advance, the charge coming to a shuddering halt as the wolves at the back collided with the wolves further forward.

  “Now!” Sergeant Bohlen’s voice sounded among the din of shouting goblins and snarling wolves. “Shut the gate!”